


Madonna and Child

by Meduseld



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Related, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Destiny, Gen, Immortality, Jaskier is Renfri's Son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22886572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Jaskier was born for this.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 27
Kudos: 322
Collections: Witcher Kink Meme (Dreamwidth)





	Madonna and Child

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](https://witcherkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/429.html?thread=84397#cmt84397) on the Witcher Kink Meme.

The things Julian Alfred Pankratz knows about his mother are few. 

That she was tall, but maybe that’s because he was so small. The feeling that she was cold, not to him, not at all, but that her skin always felt too cool. And she sang. 

That he remembers clearly. She would sing him to sleep, in a voice that was high and sweet. 

He doesn’t think it was very close to her speaking voice. Just a feeling. 

A memory of her leaning over him the dark, hair tickling his face, as she kept watch over his dreams. 

He hoards it close to his chest when Father says it was her that first called him Jaskier, her dandelion. 

Father says it only once, deep in his cups, looking through his son like he wasn’t even there. When he dares to ask about it in the morning, he gets cuffed for his troubles, but he adds it to his collection. 

He knows maybe some of his recollections are false, the creation of his mind and his longing and the scraps he can piece together. 

But Jaskier is sure, above all else, of one thing. That she loved him. 

*

Jaskier grows up not quite hearing about her, but having her all around him. 

The spaces, the gaps. The way they seem to blame him for something, for someone else’s sins. No one will say her name. 

But they will call him by several, “bastard” and “changeling” and “little shit”. Or they’ll  make fun of his girly ways, his singing, his nickname being that of a flower.

He doesn’t care. He sets about getting in trouble instead. 

Once, his grandmother pulls him out of his father’s study where he was most definitely snooping, yet again, by the ear. As always, she’s yelling at him for being ungrateful, but this time she adds especially since his mother, liar and thief, had broken his father’s heart, ran off with a band of ruffians and his father had to get him from the woods of Arcsea, the woods! Somehow she’d got herself killed, the stupid slut. 

All he hears is that she took him with her, wanted him close. That she was strong and brave and bold. 

He is her blood and that’s why it’s easy to leave Oxenfurt with a lute to find his fortune.

*

Fame and riches prove elusive, but he finds he’s better suited for life on the road than he thought. He really is a rogue after his mother’s heart. 

Jaskier doesn’t realize that he’s looking  _ for _ something until he finds it, brooding in a dimly lit corner at a dismal inn.

The man at the table is staring at the grainy, poorly sanded wood, and he draws Jaskier in like a river’s current. He’s expecting more resistance to his companionship, ready to dig his heels in and fight. Jaskier’s place is by this witcher’s side, he is sure. 

The thing that convinces him is the brooch, pinned to Geralt’s sword. Delicate, cared for. Not the kind of object a monster would care for. 

Not that he believes that since the moment when Geralt defends him from elves. Or makes sure he plays the lute for Filavandrel, relaxing at the strains. He only reaches out to touch it when he thinks Geralt is sleeping, the smooth gems lovingly cleaned. 

“I’ll have your thumbs if you steal that” Geralt rumbles, eyes still closed, and there’s a song in that line, he’s sure of it. 

*

The first time he thinks his mother might not have been entirely human, his neck is still healing from a wound inflicted by an angry djinn, and Geralt stinks of a sorceress that saved him and threatened him in almost the same breath. 

“You were very lucky,” whispers Chireadan, in a tone that says it might have been more than that. 

“You lasted far longer than I thought” he adds, and doesn’t add  _ far longer than you should have.  _

The wary look in his eye reminds him of the one lurking in the corners of the  Countess de Stael’s mouth, the lines deepening with her crow’s feet. Jaskier still looks twenty. Feels it. Geralt doesn’t notice, but Jaskier shouldn’t expect him to. 

He also doesn’t question the fact that Jaskier is eager to take to the road with him again, where people won’t notice that he should look older by now. 

It’s more soothing than it should be, being back on the road with a witcher, singing songs of blood and glory. But he was born a wanderer and wastrel, and he is happiest here, asleep on the ground under the watch of the stars. 

*

In the middle of the night, in another lonely inn, Jaskier wakes with the feeling of blood in his teeth and leaves in his hair. He was dreaming of a woman, speaking in the dark. 

Like the girl downstairs, who thought he was younger than she was. He’s past fifty. 

It’s what he’s thinking of when Geralt bursts through the door and demands he put on his boots, like they parted on good terms yesterday instead of on bad terms after a dragon hunt  years ago. He doesn’t manage to get them on of course. 

In a moment, there’s a portal, then an old man in front of him, breathing in a way that’s worrying and Geralt is shoving him back, raising his sword. 

He has been here a thousand times, staring at Geralt’s shoulders as he kills a threat.

“Renfri’s  _ son”  _ old and creepy says as if Jaskier is a  _ thing _ . 

“I will kill you if you touch him, Stregobor” Geralt growls and Jaskier is, as always, comforted. 

_ Renfri, Renfri, my mother’s name was Renfri  _ he thinks and then remembers why he knows that name. 

He vomits onto the wood, not that the other two notice.

*

They get away, Jaskier isn’t sure how. His ears are ringing, his feet are bleeding, and his  heart is beating out  _ how could you? _ He’s not sure which of them he means. 

Geralt doesn’t so much help him off the current Roach as catch him when he falls. 

As soon as he hits the ground, he puts his head in his hands. His pulse throbs in his throat. His blood, mutated and ageless. 

“Here” Geralt says, and his eyes won’t make sense of what’s in front of him. “It was hers”: he means the brooch. He catches a sob in his throat and Geralt flinches. 

“What was she like?” he hears himself say. 

“I didn’t know her much, it wasn’t long before…” 

“Before you killed her”. Geralt flinches again. 

It’s the most hurt Jaskier’s ever seen him. Odd that he’s the one to do it. 

“Yes”. “But you kept this. And her memory. Tell me” he says, thumbs running over the jewels. 

A brigand, a bandit, a woman in a song. His mother. 

Alive in Geralt, in a way, still. Always. 

“The girl in the woods” Geralt says, shaking his head. Then he starts to speak. 


End file.
